Brendan Smith: Accessibility must be the norm, not exception

Thank you very much Cathaoirleach, like others I welcome all our contributors here today and very much welcome your very strong contributions. Understandably you all had a very very strong emphasis on accessibility and easy and proper access is essential for all learners to remove barriers, that's given for all of us and of course that should be the norm not the exception. I understand that additional resources have been provided at primary and secondary level for students with additional needs. Now I heard complaints elsewhere from particularly within the further education sector about inadequate support for such students in the further and higher education sector. If we as a committee were to give a specific message to Solace in the case of further education and indeed to the Department of Further and Higher Education, what message would you like us to give that department with reasonable what could be done to improve the situation, particularly in the immediate term. One other thing that of course all of the colleges deserve great credit for the supports they are providing with limited financial resources and again as Catherine Fox outlined where you have multi buildings and a campus divided, not a single campus providing education. Now do potential students and entrants to colleges and to universities know about the supports that may be available for them? I often, we at the Irish Universities Association gave a presentation to Iraq as members a week ago and they were outlining in particular the value of the disability access route, that particular program and about here the higher education access route as well and outlining the alternative pathways to admission to college. I often fear that the people that most need the support aren't reached. Catherine Fox will remember from her good work in Calvin Institute over the years and us dealing with cross-border programs and that, have often seen very valuable peace programs in particular that didn't reach the people that needed the support most. Do you think is that happening in relation to the lack of knowledge about the supports that are available there for people with additional needs? Maybe they don't declare it, I know some of them, but is there enough application of the supports available made at second level before students complete their leave and start with that or do you see a cohort or have you come across instances of a cohort of people who are ideal for your courses and additional supports that unfortunately didn't know about them or get the opportunity to avail of them? Thank you. Obviously the deputy understands that I can only comment on what happens with us in Dunblane and I can't comment on the wider sector. In terms of the recommendations I think and it's going on to the communications element of it, the work of the cohort of guidance counsellors and second level schools that we work with are very clear in transferring that information to leave and start students and to applicants. It perhaps is those who are not in the second level education system who may not be as informed about supports. It also comes down to deputy as well as to whether the students declare or want to declare the need and want to access that support. You do have, now it is declining, but you would have had a stigma associated with seeking that extra support at all stages. But as the deputy knows from my background in communications I think it's very much a communications, it's a knowledge, it's getting the information out there and our guidance counsellors across the schools and our own guidance counsellors in further education do a tremendous job in getting that information out. My colleague Eimear might want to say a few words on that. There is an increasing awareness of the supports that are available at further ed, but there is a huge disparity between the supports that are available at second level and those that are available at further ed. So that very often we would find parents of students with additional needs coming in and saying I can't believe it, he had an SNA the whole way up and now he's expected to function in a college where there's 1,400 students without a personal assistant assigned to him. Even for part of his time we cannot do that because our personal assistants, we can't retain them, it's very difficult to recruit them because of their conditions. So with all of what we were talking about, digital literacy and maybe embedding it from the very beginning, that's great and will be fantastic even when it happens, but we cannot ignore the human touch, we can't ignore the importance of people in helping and encouraging students with additional needs. Can I ask one question? I welcome the emphasis in Dumboyne College on health care training and the Minister was here with us very recently at our committee and we were advocating for more and more work in the further education sector and preparing people for work in health care. Do you have a problem in getting placements in the private sector and in the HSE for your students? Once again I'm commenting on behalf of Dumboyne College, we work very very closely, we have a very strong health care department, we only launched a clinical skills room last week with the Minister for Health and the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade. We work very very hard to get those placements. We are in a catchment area in Dumboyne, Deputy, unlike when I was in Cavan, which would not necessarily have the widespread availability of placements. We do have cooperation from the private health care sector and also somewhat from the HSE. We would welcome a lot more of it. The HSE see it as, they look obviously to our colleagues in the higher education for placements, they have commitments that they must deliver there and it's very hard for HSE facilities to facilitate all of the demand for placement. We would welcome more, we can help them more.